"Sure! whativer struck the place?" asked Delia in her high,
squeaking voice. "What happened?"

Janice told her. Delia shook her head and slowly closed the
door--slowly but firmly. "If folks will hire them Swedes, 'tis
all they can expect," was her comment.

There was a finality to this that was uncanny. Janice became
sure, right then and there, that Mrs. Bridget Burns would never
clear up the wreck Olga Cedarstrom had made of the back kitchen.
The girl wished with all her heart that she had boxed Arlo
Junior's ears harder.

Miss Peckham, her sharp chin hung upon the top rail of the
boundary fence, called Janice just before daddy came home. As
the Day house was on the corner of Love Street, Miss Peckham was
the nearest neighbor.

She was a weazened little woman, with very sharp black eyes, who
had assumed the censorship of the neighborhood years before.
Living alone with her cats and Ambrose, her parrot, Miss Peckham
rigidly adhered to the harshest precepts of spinsterhood.

Even Janice could understand that Miss Peckham considered daddy
not at all fit to bring up, or have the sole care of, a daughter,
and that Mr. Broxton Day was not to be altogether trusted.

Miss Peckham's nature overflowed with tenderness toward animals,
and it was regarding one of her pets she now called to Janice